Louise Long Visual Artist Photographer Photography Royal College of Art

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KNOTS OF ARBORESCENCE

Drawing on Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari’s concept of the ‘rhizome’, Knots of Arborescence uncovers an area of woodland in the Hudson Valley, New York, striken by invasive vines.

In contradiction to an arborescent (dualist, binary) conception of knowledge, a rhizome is between things, intermezzo. It announces that each manifestation of an idea is a new way of seeing, rather than an extension of a previous idea. It is a map which may be connected, detached or modified, with multiple entry points. It is a river, a season, a weather system. Forests as rhizomes are knots of arborescence, uncovering opportunity from old constraints. The rhizome is also as a creeping rootstalk, from which multiple new shoots grow. The vine’s tolerance of deep shade allows its invasion of closed forested areas, its proliferation without limits. Shrubs may be smothered, whilst canopy trees strangled or uprooted, under the excessive weight of the vines.

Yet soon arise slippages between the philosophy and the natural environment. Discrepancies in definition which call into question the very notion of invasiveness and change. Here, in this space of conceptual displacement, rupture or circularity, is where the work takes hold.